This blog will mostly contain notes and photos of birds and bird behavior observed and photographed in my backyard patch, East Gippsland, and on birding journeys around Australia.

Thursday, 12 February 2015

Bird bands and flags

The study of birds has long been aided by banding,
as it is especially useful to learn about their movements, range and how long
individuals live.

Small, light and durable metal bands
imprinted with a code/number and possibly contact details are fitted to bird’s
legs. Obviously to fit bands, birds must be in the hand, which means they must
first be captured. The easiest way is to capture birds is as chicks, before
they fly, at nests or in breeding rookeries for example. For older birds, mist
nets or canon nets are required to catch flying or resting birds respectively.

Juvenile Crested Tern with metal band on right leg.

This Crested Tern is a juvenile and it has
a metal leg band. The bird was photographed on the ocean beach at Lakes
Entrance on the 14th of June 2012. Obviously it is not possible to
read the imprinted information on the band unless the bird was either
recaptured or found dead. To determine when and where the Tern was banded would
require the number on the metal band.

In this case the Victoria Wader Study Group
(VWSG) were able to advise that this juvenile bird, along with 649 other
chicks, would have been banded by them at Corner Inlet in late 2011. They also
advised that Crested Terns move east after breeding so finding one at Lakes
Entrance five to six months after the banding is consistent. They also continue
east and then north with some reaching as far as the Queensland border.

More recently birds are not only being
banded but are often fitted with coloured plastic tags or flags which has the
great advantage of allowing individual birds to be identified in the field with
binoculars or a spotting scope or the details can be captured with a digital
camera as the following photos show.

There are two methods for the use of plastic
flags.

One method involves up to three small
coloured flags often with one on the leg with the metal band and two on the
other leg. The colour combination allows identification of an individual bird
without the need to recapture it.

The colour leg flags on bird at left tells us this is Om/OLg. The middle bird is a juvenile and the other two are adults (fully black hoods). They were photographed at Mushroom Reef
Beach, Flinders, on the Mornington Peninsula

The history of the flagged bird was tracked down
via Dr. Grainne Maguire, BirdLife Australia, Project Manager, Beach-nesting
Birds.

This bird is Om/OLg and it was banded at
Berrys Beach on the 11th of February 2010 by Phillip Island Nature
Parks. It was last seen at Kitty Miller Bay on Phillip Island on 17/07/12. From
November 2012 onwards it has been resident at Flinders beach where I
photographed it on 31/07/14. So the bird was 4.5 years old and for about the
first 2 ½ years this bird lived on Phillip Island, then for the last 2 years at
Flinders on the Mornington Peninsula. This bird was reported to have made
several nesting attempts at Flinders Beach but alas all were unsuccessful.

Little Tern with flags, Jones Bay, Gippsland Lakes. This is the same three flag method used for the Hooded Plover above. I have no information for this bird.

The second flagging method involves just
one flag with engraved letters and or a letter/number code, which enables
individual birds to be identified.

Once again Dr. Grainne Maguire was able to
advise that this bird was tagged in 2011 making it about 3 years old when it
was photographed. The interesting information provided in this case was that CS
was not a juvenile as the streaky head colour suggests but is a leucistic bird.
For years it was being counted in the area as a young bird and over inflating
breeding success values.

Hooded Plover LC at St Andrews Beach, December 2014.

Hooded Plover LC was one of six adult
HP’s on a section of St Andrews Beach, which at the time were breeding with one
chick hatched and another bird sitting on eggs.

Juvenile Caspian Tern D3 with banded adult (parent?).

Juvenile Caspian Tern D3 was photographed
with a parent bird, which is banded but not flagged, at Storm Point, Lake
Victoria on the Gippsland Lakes on 5/02/15. Another adult bird was also close
by so perhaps this was a young bird with its parents.

The sighting was reported to the Australian
Government bird and bat banding scheme (ABBBS). In due course I received a
letter advising that the bird was banded and flagged by the VWSG on the
12/11/2014 on Mud Island in Port Phillip Bay. The bird is about 3 months old
and it has moved approximately 268 kms east since it was banded.

Tracking birds is now moving beyond bands
and flags into a very high tech era with geo-locators being fitted to birds,
which are then tracked by satellites. This has allowed the amazing migration
flights of waders to and from their northern hemisphere breeding grounds in the
high arctic to be mapped in exquisite detail.

But still, on the ground, much of the bird tracking
via banding is achieved by the efforts of hard working and dedicated
volunteers. The key to the success of all banding is to retrieve the bands or
obtain reports of flagged birds throughout their lives. So when we see a flagged
bird it is really useful to try and capture the colour and code and report it
to ABBBS.